Wednesday, 14 November 2007

Oven Baked Sausage Ragu

Jamie Oliver made this one of his recent series when he was doing a special on tomatoes. He made it outside in the garden, in a wood oven and assorted tomatoes and it looked wonderful.

I have made this several times and its delicious, especially when tomatoes are plentiful. It takes a bit of time, but not a lot of work. This is a really “boys” recipe I find. Crusty bread, sausages and loads of flavour.

Here's what I cam up with after watching this Jamie episode and making it a few times now.

In a large, deep tray put the bacon/pancetta with some oil and put in the oven for a few minutes till crispy.

Once its crispy, remove from the oven, add the bay leaves and thyme (rosemary or oregano work well too, or all 3) and toss them in the and let them sizzle.

Cut the stalks from the top of the tomatoes and put them in the tray, with the open stalk part facing down to soak up the oil and let juices flow into tray. Drizzle with olive oil and put them back in the oven for 10-20 minutes.

Rub olive oil lightly all over the sausages.

Take the tray out of the oven and pinch off the skins of the tomato. (I have skipped this step and no one seems to mind).

Add the the sausages to the pan and push them in between the tomatoes.

Place about 4 whole pieces of garlic unpeeled through the mix. Add more olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper.

Put the tray back in oven for an hour, turning the sausages once or twice throughout.

After an hour, remove the tray from the oven and serve by tearing up a big crusty roll, spoon the sausages and tomato with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar to finish.

As there is only 2 of us at home, we usually have a fair bit left over. What I usually do is, slice the sausages and then roughly chop the rest of it the next day. Add all this to a pan and allow to simmer for 5 to 10 minutes while you cook some pasta and mix them together, the flavours are sensational!

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Thank you so much for posting this recipe - I have the Jamie at Home cookbook but the recipe for sausages and tomato is different to the show - yours reproduces the far better version perfectly. 5 stars to you!xx